Christ the King Lutheran Church this summer said goodbye to Pastor Jerome Janisko, who retired after 43 years at a church founded 47 years ago.

The congregation will need a new leader, but replacing someone whose very presence defined church for many will take time.

"They need to stop and take a deep collective breath," said Pastor Edward Sproul.

Sproul's job is to help them breathe.

The professional interim pastor, who arrived a month ago, helps people cope with anxiety over Janisko's departure and gives them time to re-center, so they can move on.

"My job is to create some safe space," Sproul said.

Because he has helped many congregations through change, the interim pastor has a unique perspective on Holliston and on how people face uncertainty.

According to Sproul, the need for interim pastors began about 25 years ago, because of differences between the baby boomers' generation and their parents.

"(Boomers) tend to be attached more to people and places they know and love," he said.

When people like a pastor, they come to church. A pastor's departure jolts the congregation, and people trickle away.

Christ the King Church parishioners said Janisko's retirement shook them like the death of a dear friend.

"People need to heal and express their frustration, because it's almost like Pastor Janisko died," said Hilkka McKittrick, a Stephen Minister who has attended the church for 14 years. Stephen Ministers are trained laypeople who help parishioners who are having trouble, those coping with grief, loss of a job or illness.

Sproul said the previous generation, veterans of World War II and the Korean War, valued duty, responsibility and obligation. They drew more strength from the church as an establishment than from individual leaders.

"Institutional loyalties are no longer there," Sproul said.

Now he said he sees the "tether effect," as people float like astronauts in space, only tied to a church if they form six or seven strong relationships.

"It's all I really knew as a pastor at this church. He was a very stable influence in my life," said Dale Hava, the president of the congregation who has attended Christ the King for 35 years, when speaking about Janisko. When a longtime leader leaves a congregation, about 15 percent of the congregation stops attending regularly, Sproul said.

McKittrick said she doesn't know anyone who has left the church in the past few months, but, as an example of how people are occupied with something other than church, said it's nearly impossible to find a parking spot at Market Basket on a Sunday morning.

"There's so many things going on in the life of a family now," she said.

Page 2 of 3 - Sproul's goal is to help people want to keep coming to church.

The pastor has a master's degree in business and said his degree helps him understand the Holliston congregation, home to many commuting business people.

"He's able to explain things very easily to make them understand. He's able to get them involved in the process," Hava said.

Previously, Sproul was an interim pastor in Auburn, near Worcester, which he described as a blue-collar congregation of retired factory workers, truck drivers and mom-and-pop-business owners.

Whereas most young Auburn churchgoers were the first in their family to attend college, Sproul said in Holliston, even people in their 70s have engineering degrees.

"As a result, there is a faster pace and a higher stress level for people," he said.

Sproul said those who plummeted from six-figure salaries to unemployment also lost their identity and their self-worth.

"A place where normally you look for comfort is all of the sudden not so comfortable," he said.

Church members said they know they won't find a new pastor overnight.

With an unstable economy, it's hard to also find anxiety at church, they said.

"People want stability and they don't like change," said Tom Cleverdon, a 25-year member who serves on the church council.

Sproul's job is to help the group manage its anxiety.

"There's such a void created from someone leaving that's been there so long. You need to kind of sit back and analyze who you are as a church and where you want to go," Hava said.

Sproul has worked in the northeast for 23 years and said it takes practice to teach others how to cope with grief without that grief weighing him down, too.

"It's more of a help not to help them," he said.

Many other Christian denominations, except Methodists and Catholics, use interim pastors, Sproul said.

"It's a chance to let the congregation experiment with some new ideas," said Rev. Peter Cook, senior minister at the Plymouth Church in Framingham, United Church of Christ.

Just like committees searching for a new superintendent, CEO or university president, Cook said congregations often need to jostle themselves out of the rut of familiarity.

"People just need that little space," he said.

Cook also said it can be expensive if the church hurriedly hires a pastor its members later decide isn't a good fit.

Sproul said before they talk about who the next leader will be, they should feel good about spending ample time reflecting.

"Where we are is probably the big question," he said.

He said he will stay at the Holliston church for 18 to 24 months, until the congregation finds a permanent pastor.

Page 3 of 3 - "My feeling is, you finally come out of that unknown area and you say to yourself: This is a new opportunity to redefine what the church is all about," Cleverdon said.

(Laura Krantz can be reached at 508-626-4429 or lkrantz@wickedlocal.com)